Faith in Education: Ed.L.D. Candidate Brian Barnes

Ed.L.D. candidate Brian Barnes, Ed.M.’03, knows that it takes all stakeholders to make a change in education.

“Education is a social issue,” he says. “It takes everybody to invest to make sure everybody has opportunity.”

The ordained minister and former math teacher has witnessed this firsthand. Prior to joining HGSE’s third Ed.L.D. cohort, Barnes led an initiative at the Boston Public Schools (BPS) that partnered schools with faith-based institutions for the purpose of educational achievement.

“This was not about indoctrinating,” he says, noting that the goal was never to alter religious beliefs but to build relationships, offer support, mentor, tutor, and help raise funds. The success of the initiative made him recognize the importance of being transformative in ways in which everyone in a community has ownership.

“I felt like I was making an impact and breaking ground,” he says. “We witnessed stakeholders in the faith-based community become invigorated to partner with our schools by knowing that BPS saw them as not only valuable, but necessary for the improvement of learning for all students. We saw the emergence of many new partnerships and the positive exposure of existing school-faith partnerships that were doing the work well and achieving results as examples.”

A visit from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to observe the initiative’s work excited and affirmed the community’s positive efforts, says Barnes. It also made him think about the possibilities for something even greater. But, first, he says he needed more education himself, particularly about educational leadership and ways to strengthen skills to make a broader impact. So, he headed back to HGSE.

“The Ed.L.D. Program is about transforming what exists and transforming ourselves,” he says.

The first transformation for Barnes came when he realized that being an educator, and later a minister, had the potential to impact the inequalities he witnessed around him.

Growing up in Alabama, Barnes excelled in the classroom. However, by high school, he took notice that many of his black peers were not in his advanced classes and that many were struggling to stay in school. Furthermore Barnes noticed that he wasn’t being encouraged to take advantage of the same opportunities as his white peers. In fact, he says, that when he told his pre-engineering instructor of his interest in attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was told to apply somewhere else because “it was a school for white students.”

When it finally came time for Barnes to attend college, he studied as a NASA scholar at the historically black college, Morehouse College. “It was the first time I was with 20 black males who were outstanding in math,” he says. “I thought this is how it should look … this is how black males should be showing up in a classroom. Is there a way I can contribute to making this a reality?”

In a matter of a year, Barnes had shifted his focus from being an engineer to an educator. “I felt like this was what I was supposed to do,” he says. “One of the toughest decisions I ever made was to drop engineering to take a minor in secondary education (along with a major in mathematics). I’m trying to ensure quality education for not only black males but all children.”

Before graduating, he was already thinking about furthering his own education.  He came to the Ed School for his master’s degree in Specialized Study (now Special Studies) under Professor Robert Peterkin. Barnes wound up teaching math and eventually leading an academy in a Boston pilot middle school. Around the same time, he was increasingly working on the link between education and faith. Although he grew up in the church and faith was stressed, he began attending the Charles Street AME Church that was extremely focused on education as ministry. Thus, his views on community, faith, and education began to expand.

“I was seeing young people hurting from violence, drugs, gangs, and dropping out,” he says. “Students who were not having the opportunity to maximize their opportunity.”

Eventually, he transitioned from teaching and school administration to youth ministry, which led to his position at Boston Public Schools.

“My goal is to have the greatest impact as an individual and to work collaboratively to bring all of my background – including faith – to the table in education,” Barnes says.